Barrett Tagliarino's books are best-selling choices for self-study and are used at universities, vocational and high schools. His field-tested courses are designed to get serious guitar students to understand and play the music they want with no time wasted. Barrett uses and teaches standard terminology to prepare musicians to communicate clearly on the job. He is an L.A. session guitarist, solo artist, frequent magazine contributor, and a full-time instructor at Musicians Institute since 1989.

(2012)For intermediate to advanced players who already know and use major and minor scales and modes, this book uses short and easy examples to help you get new sounds into your ears and under your fingers fast. There are interval studies and melodic patterns, analyses of non-diatonic harmony, modal applications, and licks for each scale, including 3 complete solos. Exact fingerings are supplied for any challenging passages. Some are excerpts from Barrett's solo cds and client sessions. Includes download code for all 74 audio examples. Here is the audio download page for book owners.

Interval studies are a valuable way to connect the fingers to the ears and master the mechanics of single-string technique. Before starting this book you should be able to play basic major and minor open position and barre chords, and pick eighth notes in time with a metronome.

You'll apply exact timing to bends, slides, legato articulations and grace notes to get your soloing under your complete rhythmic control. No prior music reading knowledge is required, but you will learn a bit about correct rhythmic notation as you go. Over 150 examples are tabbed and notated, and demonstrated at slow tempos on the CD.

Chapters 1-11 set up the basics: counting beats and divisions, playing in time, finding any beat, syncopation, pickup phrases, articulations, determining and contributing to the groove, finding and defining the correct phrase length.

Guitar Reading Workbook (2007) by Barrett Tagliarino. This fun method book arose from Reading classes for beginning GIT students. Concise explanations and diagram exercises similar to those in the Fretboard Workbook let you relate the notes on the reading staff to their fretboard positions.

The Guitar Reading Workbook is great for beginning guitarists or experienced by-ear players who want to get started reading notation (not to be confused with the Guitar FRETBOARD Workbook, which may be what you're after).

Early assignments in this book might take about 5 minutes to complete. Later ones can take up to half an hour. The exercises differ from chapter to chapter. Sometimes you just have to write the names of some notes or chords that you see on the staff. In others, you write which beat number a rhythm falls on. Later, you'll read some tab and translate it into regular notation, or look at some notes and identify the chord they make, and so on. When you've finished the written part, you pick up the guitar, turn on the metronome, and play the notation.

Throughout the book everything is made easy and clear as possible, so you don't ever have to learn two new things at once. But if you get this book, you should spend at least 6 months to a year with it. Go slowly! It starts out basic but takes you into some reasonably advanced territory.

The Guitar Fretboard Workbook (2003) by Barrett Tagliarino (click title to buy) is the top-selling book on Musicians Institute Press, and has over 95 customer reviews (thanks, people!) to help you decide if it's right for you. You can also "Search Inside" this book at amazon. We have reviews from magazines and online forums here. You don't have to read music to use this book or the next one.

Chord Tone Soloing for Guitar (2006) by Barrett Tagliarino (click title to buy) is a book/CD combo that covers different territory from the others. Once you know the fretboard, you still have to know which notes to play, and when! This book has also been very popular; reviews here.

Barrett's latest CD, Throttle Twister, is transcribed in both tablature and traditional notation for you here in an 8.25" by 11" book. Click to buy it at amazon.

Instructional DVD

Classic Rock Guitar Soloing (2000) by Barrett Tagliarino (click title to buy). On this DVD Barrett plays some examples along with a jam track so you can hear how'd you use them live, then lets the track roll on so you can try the licks by yourself.

It starts with basics like the 5 minor and major pentatonic scale patterns, dorian and aeolian modes, and the blues scale. Then you cover soloing techniques: string bending, vibrato, pull-offs, hammer-ons, and slides, along with some finger exercises to break out of the scalar rut.

There are then some classic blues and country licks that are essential to the style, with a demonstration of how to use them in major and minor keys.